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Comment by heavyset_go | Hacker News Reader

> I save money by spending less on food, drinks, and electricity.

For those of us who have to commute, it's not exactly the norm to be saving money while commuting.

Commutes are responsible for a 10% drop in hourly wages[1], and the median commute time results in spending 10 full days commuting a year.

The average commuter in one of the largest metro areas in the country will spend over 13 full days commuting a year:

> In the area with the longest average commute (New York-Newark-Jersey City), commuters are spending an average of 13 days, 2 hours, and 26 minutes driving to and from work. That means that 14 vacation days a year are barely covering the time it takes to get to work every day. So in addition to dropping the average wage from $34.71 per hour to $30.15 per hour, in order to get 14 days of hanging with their family on a beach, New York commuters must be willing to spend nearly as much time sitting in a car.

[1] https://go.frontier.com/business/commute-calculator

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Private transport is also one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing daily commute seems like a good way to improve our carbon footprint.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200317-climate-change-c...

One of many, though; I'm really getting my hackles up with corporations making end users responsible for things like plastic, industrial farming and co2 emissions. Yes they're a part of the equation, but there's much bigger impact to be made if they work from the top down.

Mind you, there are things like that going on (at least in my neck of the woods), with things like subsidies to consumers for going to battery powered cars and installing solar panels, and subsidies to e.g. energy producers for building wind farms out at sea.

> there's much bigger impact to be made if they work from the top down

Exactly. Germany banning plastic straws while simultaneously funding a new natural gas pipeline feels very much like they just want it to seem like things are improving.

Public consciousness seems to lack the ability to prioritize issues.

Disposable plastics are a problem first and foremost because they cause proliferation of microplastics in the biosphere. This is an issue, but it's not an important issue right now. It's likely harmful to biosphere and to us in the long run - but as of today, there's no noticeable harm being done that can be tied to microplastics, which suggests any negative effects are weak.

Climate change, on the other hand, is a civilization-ending threat. We keep burning more fossil fuels, and it's quite likely our grandchildren will get to starve to death. Preventing this should be our absolute top priority. Microplastics can wait.

It's like trying to administer first aid to an accident victim who has a nasty skin cut on their arm, and a leg that got cut off below the knee. Yes, that skin cut is painful and it needs treating to prevent infection, but it can wait - the first priority is to deal with the leg, before the victim bleeds out.

> Public consciousness seems to lack the ability to prioritize issues.

Things that everybody is going to notice first-hand have an outsized impact on public consciousness. When combined with democracy, this has nasty consequences.

For politicians banning plastic straws is a no-brainer: easy to ban, no real impact on anything, and everyone is going to notice it and feel like something is happening. Same for plastic grocery bags and cutlery. Do it and maybe you'll grab some of those Green votes, same play as the Energiewende.

Meanwhile if you make industry even just .1% more efficient the impact is larger by orders of magnitude but nobody is going to notice, first-hand, right now. So it's pointless when you only care about votes. Which is sadly a main feature of democracy.

Do you have any better alternatives to a democracy?

There doesn't seem to be any good one.

GP described what's a clear systemic failure inherent in the current implementation of the system. This doesn't mean we have to throw the system away - figuring out how to mitigate this problem would work too.

On this, I don't have any solid ideas. In a way, it's a marketing problem: maybe there's a way to make people more receptive to reality than to feel-good but ultimately meaningless actions?

I sometimes wonder if governments shouldn't have an official propaganda department, with an official website, explaining in layman's terms the reasoning behind various laws being introduced. You'd go to a page for plastic straws ban, and see the government's official word on why it was drafted, what problem it's meant to solve, how it attempts that, and how they track the results.

Of course, everyone would have a field day debunking every single article from a million different angles, but at least it would serve to anchor the discussion. And it would be a place for a smarter politicians/parties to explain why increasing efficiency of some industry by 0.01% is a huge win by the current administration - hopefully leading to more such actions in the future.

There's a thin line between giving clear explanations and patronizing the citizens, but I think governments need to start walking it - as it is, politics is way too complicated for regular people to follow in any meaningful sense, other than repeating soundbites.

Nope, I'm just noting a failure mode.

Republicanism, lots of little democracies competing against one another for citizens, yet united when it comes to things like national defense. The US was originally designed to be a constitutional republic but a growing federal government has degraded it to more of a simple representative democracy.

I never heard the term "Republicanism". Are there any (real) countries that practice this? Australia's states have lots of divested powers. How do you feel about that balance?

Im not familiar enough with government in Oz to say but the closest example in modern times would be the EU, although they have a heavier hand than I'd recommend. If people in say France were unhappy with their government they can more easily move to Germany then if they were separate nations not in the EU. The key is giving the states enough control that they are distinct from one another while allowing people to move between them. If the federal government takes too much power the states become homogeneous and you lose the ability to vote with your feet like that.

How does the EU handle cases where one member wants to treat something as contraband and other do not? With open borsers for people and trade can one meber state have different laws for banned items or substances?

> With open borsers for people and trade can one meber state have different laws for banned items or substances?

The Netherlands have fairly lax laws on substances and are a EU member. If you take something from the Netherlands into a country that doesn't want that item within their borders you are subject to the local laws. Same thing that would happen if you brought contraband from South America to the US really.

IMO, if you try to make industry .1% more efficient, they will lobby the hell out of everyone to make sure that doesn't happen, because it affects their profit, and they threaten to withhold their campaign contributions. So instead, politicians do unimportant things like limit plastic straws.

Bottom line is, voters may elect politicians, but companies fund their campaigns.

Crowded, rich countries that responsibly burn garbage & waste still have a serious issue with dioxins generated by burning plastics. You can filter some of it, but usually areas around these plants have much higher than normal dioxin levels.

That said, I like the balance in your comment about the known effects of microplastics. At the moment, it is just a hype story. Honestly: No one really knows, but we should continue to seriously monitor and research the issue. I have heard that stretchy clothing (aka "ath-leisure") causes a lot of micro-fibres to be shed during laundry. This is simiar to microplastics, as most ath-leisure is made with synthetic materials that are essentially refined oil (as plastics).

Natural gas is great. It doesn't generate as much pollution as one might think. Other than fully clean energy like hydro and solar, it is one of the best.

it doesn't generate much in terms of particulate emissions (eg it's not dirty like diesel) but it's quite bad in terms of greenhouse effects. the natural gas pipeline network leaks a relatively large amount of the gas that transits it (it's on the order of several percent per year) and because it's such a distributed problem it's not economical for companies to fix it purely on a cost-savings basis. And natural gas (methane) is an extremely potent greenhouse gas - it is #2, behind only carbon dioxide in overall impact on the atmosphere, and something around 100x as potent as CO2 over a 100 year lifespan.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/06/the-us-natural-gas-industry-...

new studies suggest the leak rate is around 2.3%, which is about twice as high as previously predicted - and at 3% you have offset all the benefits compared to coal generation. Again, obviously that's still better in terms of particulate emissions/acid rain, but you wouldn't be doing any less global warming. So it is still significantly bad in terms of greenhouse effect, not nearly the panacea the fossil-fuel industry would like to present it as.

(and conversely - the fact that it's such a distributed problem makes it difficult/expensive to clean up. you can capture CO2 and particulates from a point source - it's expensive and it sucks but you can do it. But you can't stop 2 million miles of pipes from leaking a little bit at every fitting.)

the only saving grace is that methane does oxidize relatively quickly, on the order of tens of years, whereas CO2 is pretty much there forever. but if we're still pumping out more natural gas into the atmosphere 10 years later, that's not really the fix people think it is. Again, it's 100x more potent over a 100 year lifespan than CO2, the "long term" picture isn't all that rosy either.

How much of that gas was going to leak anyway? The fields they pipe it from probably don't hold it all in. Any stats on this in Google are buried under reports on the extraction industry, so I can't find anything concrete.

"Anyway" from what reference point? The gas stayed in the ground for millions of years before we poked a bunch of wells into the reservoir. If the wells are shut in correctly, they shouldn't leak appreciably. As the comment above notes, the more pipes you have, the more gas is going to leak.

Unfortunately, in many places you can't produce oil without producing gas, and with so much gas right now, there's not a lot of financial incentive to capture it all. If we reduce the need for oil, we'll reduce gas leak emissions as well.

That's the question. How much makes it to the surface? Oil used to pop up everywhere before humans sucked up all the easy to reach surface sources. There's still a little that comes up from the ocean floor without any human help.

https://response.restoration.noaa.gov/oil-and-chemical-spill...

Why would it be different for other things created by the same processes? And do the pipes let less leak out than if we just left it in the ground?

This source suggests that geological methane emissions are about 40% of total emissions: https://phys.org/news/2021-03-natural-geological-methane-emi...

Oil and gas seeps notwithstanding, the vast majority of reservoirs are stable and likely to remain so over human timescales unless we stick wells into them and start piping fluids around on the surface.

slight addendum to the above - I should have said "not dirty like fossil-diesel". I'd like to make the point that synthetic diesels like biodiesel are extremely clean in terms of particulates and is in fact one of the more interesting "bio-fuels" (although of course there are always problems with any approach that puts food in direct competition with fuel for feedstocks).

I'm confused by the second part <<funding a new natural gas pipeline>>. I assume you are talking about Nord Stream 2.

Switching from brown coal to natural gas can reduce carbon footprint by about 50%. This is a good stepping stone to reduce the huge amount of brown coal that Germany uses for power. Also, the reduction in NOx and SOx is huge by switching from brown coal to natural gas. Another big win for public health.

Do I misunderstand your point?

Germany has limited places to harvest wind (North Sea) and limited solar resources. How else can they reduce their carbon footprint? I guess they can build massive solar arrays in Libya and then build the world's largest long-range DC power line to Munich? (No joke: Singapore might do this with Australia.)

It seems you argue it’s a stepping stone, then you argue there’s no other way. Both of these can’t be true.

But if you ask me, the long term answer is nuclear. I know it’s controversial but many of the issues are blown out of proportion.

I would argue, that when you take a holistic view of the complete environment, including the soils and subsoils where our food largely comes from, the only long term answer you're left with is to de-civilize and go back to hand tools, local living, and animal transport for the rare times it's needed.

> I'm really getting my hackles up with corporations making end users responsible for things like plastic, industrial farming and co2 emissions.

Me too, but GP has an argument along these lines here.

Commute is a big, and often deciding factor, in private car ownership. Get rid of it, and most drivers will lose the major reason for owning a car. Expand the delivery systems for day-to-day stuff like groceries, and another big reason - buying in bulk - goes away. While people living in sparsely populated areas will still need their cars, the dwellers of large cities with serviceable public transport infrastructure might be more inclined to get rid of their cars, and just rent one for an occasional out-of-town errand.

In this way, normalizing work from home creates top-down pressure for reducing the number of private cars in use.

> Get rid of it, and most drivers will lose the major reason for owning a car.

I think this is backwards.

We saw during the pandemic a mass exodus from cities. Once people could work from home, they decided they didn't want to live in a city anymore.

Once you remove the burden of commuting, suburban / rural life becomes _even more_ attractive, increasing the need for cars.

> Once people could work from home, they decided they didn't want to live in a city anymore.

IMO it’s too early to claim that. People left the city during the pandemic because there was no point paying the premium to live in a city when all its amenities are closed. As cities open back up we might see a lot of people return. Anecdotally, I know a bunch of early career folks in their 20s that moved back in with their parents during the pandemic to save cash. That most certainly isn’t their long term plan.

I don’t doubt that a good number of folks won’t return to the city once this is over. But I wonder if that’s just an acceleration of moves they would have already made in the next 5 years or so, rather than something indicative of the death of cities.

I agree. As for most things, the internet narrative exaggerates reality. New York is already quickly coming back to normal -- certainly slower than before, but offices aren't open yet. Once they open, the intangible benefits of being in the office will re-appear, and result in the same cultural forces that have led to cities for ~all of human civilization.

People who are betting against urban life are basically making a bet against human nature based on short-term trends.

Cities are certainly not the norm when looking at "~all of human civilization.". The norm by far is small anarchic-communal villages (150 people or less). Yes, eventually some outliers form, and villages become a large metropolis, with all of the problems and certain pitfalls that entails.

The past year also saw a 50%+ spike in urban violent crime rates, and repeated riots in nearly every major city. Anecdotally most of the professional families I know who fled to the suburbs cited safety as the primary reason.

citation please.

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/06/953254623/massive-1-year-rise...

You're forgetting the key bit: It was during a pandemic, and so especially during the first 6-12 months, people didn't feel safe being around others. They also often legally didn't have any space outside they could enjoy. Suburbs bring personal space and the legal right to be in your back yard.

A city is an entirely different experience when its residents are allowed to use parks and can enjoy dining out, walking to a market, strolling to the cinema, etc...

Yup. In between the waves of lockdowns, cities were actually more pleasant to be in than they normally are - with so many offices closed, there was a lot less people and cars on the streets, meaning less pollution and less noise.

Without the commuter rush, many places were much more pleasant. I'm in a suburban area and it used to be a solid hour of "line 'o cars" on the main street by my house. God forbid you want to go somewhere at 5pm or 8am.

Now it's more congested, but traffic still moves pretty quick. I'm not looking forward to all the commuters going back to the office.

"for a brief period during unprecedented times, a city apartment was as pleasent to live in as a proper house. This has quickly passed."

Almost. A proper house still has more space, and less noise constraints :).

This is such a bizarre comment. Do you think people will just forget how easily it was for their entire lifestyle to become illegal? Do you think those that moved to the suburb will forget the incredible freedom they purchased?

I think the pandemic highlighted a key deficiency of cities which most people will not soon forget.

I downsized to one car during the pandemic. The only reason I had two cars was because we were a family of commuters. Now that no one in the house is commuting, there's little point to owning and maintaining multiple cars.

And the one car I do have could potentially last me the rest of my life because I've gone from commuting 12k miles per year (time 2), down to around 3000.

Second had car prices have soared and people might not be keep to go back to jammed public transport due to covid.

My last two bus trips had betwen1 and 5 people blatantly ignoring the mask requirements and this is in on of the UK covid hot spots.

Depends where you live and if you have to heat or cool your house to work from home. Homes are much more inefficient to moderate temperature than offices. That may or may not offset the benefit from commuting, and even less so if done on public transport with lower emissions.

That only applies if the home is empty when people are at the office. If my family stays at home while I commute, then there are emissions from commuting, heating the home and heating the office.

Not even then - nobody likes to return to a very cold home after a day at the office. It'll take advances in insulation to become much more widespread before a meaningful amount of people starts shutting off heating when away. That means first tearing down and rebuilding a lot of buildings, because you can't just bolt this kind of insulation tech onto an old construction.

> Not even then - nobody likes to return to a very cold home after a day at the office.

I'm also not going to let my pets freeze or bake while no one is home.

After spending all day inside my box I need a ride to clear my head anyway

The way to reduce carbon footprint is to put a zero on the price of gasoline, diesel, natural gas and all other forms of carbon-based fuel. A 900% tax should do just fine.

Just nobody is brave enough to do it, because it would be political suicide. Even if you gave the money back to the people in the form of tax breaks and social programmes, it would still be political suicide.

900% of 0 = 0.

By put a 0, OP means add a zero (3.95 -> 39.5). Not make gas free.

I don’t know - a carbon tax and telling everyone they’re required to come to the office just seems like it’s punishing workers even more. For many people transit it’s not available or odd fossil fueled powered. WFH should be preferred over a carbon tax on commuting - eliminating the consumption altogether is far better than sending tax money to the government and hoping that people change behaviors based on pricing.

A 900% tax would make workers tell their employers that they demand to work from home, get a big pay rise, or go on strike...

It's not just political suicide, it's a game theoretical non-optimal play because any one country doing this only hurts themselves while not actually solving climate change. It only works if you have some large number of the top emitters agree to cap all together.

The food/drink part could be the most of it. A Google employee enjoying free food and drink could save $60/day versus buying prepared food ($10 for breakfast, $20 for lunch, and $30 for dinner). If you drink much coffee or other beverages, that could be another $15/day.

If you weigh this against spending an extra hour or two commuting, then it looks like a lousy bargain. But if you are like many people, and ended up working more hours during the pandemic, [1] then that erases some/all of the gains of not commuting.

1: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/24/people-a...

> But if you are like many people, and ended up working more hours during the pandemic, [1] then that erases some/all of the gains of not commuting.

Wow. I cut my hours down substantially due to WFH. Pre-COVID I was doing 70+ hrs per week due to commuting into the area during the week and having nothing to do.

Now I put in maybe 40hrs per week, broken up into 1hr chunks here and there and I'm not spending over $1500/month just for a room/expenses in the area where work is.

It's great! I'm not going back to the office, like, ever.

Are you working less because you save commute time, and work more efficiently at your home workstation?

Or are you just clocking in less, also producing less?

Sometimes working less doesn’t mean producing less, or if it’s less it’s not necessarily linear. They said they used to work more “because they had nothing to do”. The extra hours may not be worth as much as a well rested mind.

Oh, my overall productivity is down quite a bit due to family distractions.

Once the new house is built, my office will probably be in a separate guest house.

A Google Employee working from home could save $200/day versus getting a fancy limousine to go to work.

Nobody buys prepared food every day, and the costs of food are negligible for a Google employee.

> Nobody buys prepared food every day

I get what you are trying to say, but empirically false

Yeah if I made Google wages I would not want to waste an hour or more a day on commuting. Plus, you can easily make food for 10-20 dollars a day so saving by eating the company food will cost you more just by colmuting and losing your time (or potential wages).

I certainly don't worry about what I spend on food and I spend a few dollars a day on breakfast and lunch. Maybe $10-15 typically on dinner (if that). Most people don't have the free breakfast/lunch/dinner some tech employers do. And my utilities might differ a few dollars per day if I'm home or not.

Do you think googlers are paid by the hour?

> Nobody buys prepared food every day,

I know many people who don't cook at all and live solely on prepared food.

Do you see more-than-usual overweight people in this group?

(Never cooking is very, very rare here in The Netherlands so I'm curious about any anecdata here).

In my experience it is a horseshoe, people that eat out for every meal tend to be either on the high end of the income spectrum and thin or the very low end and obese.

These are broad strokes, but my experience in rural America and in SF bears this out, rich people eat out very often and tend to be fit and the very poor also eat out more than average but tend to be obese. Everyone else is in the middle.

Also depends on the cuisine. Quite a few cuisines take extraordinarily long to cook, and at that point, you're better off just eating out to save time (if you have the money) than deal with those meal-kits that are either not sustainable, or healthy, or often-times, both.

In The Netherlands, the cuisine tends to be really simple, and salad-kits and meal-kits are extremely popular. The fanciest food that people 'cook' is often a soup or pasta, and I'd say it's extremely rare for anyone to make pasta or sauces from scratch.

> Nobody buys prepared food every day, and the costs of food are negligible for a Google employee.

Of course they do? When I've been crunching, like just putting insane hours in, I've gone weeks without cooking and just ordering in. It costs a fortune, even at Google salary - or in my case, 'SF' salary. Not to mention the cost of living is already absurd due to rent - your salary gets eaten up faster than you might imagine.

I know Googlers who literally never buy groceries because they eat all of their big meals at the office, grab a bottled smoothie on their way out the door, and get restaurant food on the weekends. It is cheaper to get groceries than to buy prepared food, but there’s a lot of spoilage that happens when you’re only cooking 2 days/week.

There’s a big jump that happens when you have no food in the house. No spoilage, no dishes, no pantry to stock. I didn’t even work for a company and this is how I lived immediately pre-covid in Mexico City. I kept the ingredients to make a protein shake, and had one at 11am after the gym every day. Then went out for dinner. That was the distinct downtime. If I wanted a snack, I walked to the corner store and bought one. It was a sweet setup.

I'm not at Google, but while my office was open I didn't stock much breakfast food. The breakfast food at my job was better than I usually bought, so I didn't need to buy it.

I did not own a fridge or any cooking appliances for my first year at Google. 3 meals a day at work + takeout on weekends.

In my apartment, the number one electricty cost comes from my fridge+freezer. (To be fair, I live in the sub-tropics.)

Just because you overeat and overindulge when it's free and shoved in front of you doesn't mean you need, want, or will buy the same food if it's not.

That's true! But I wouldn't equate eating expensive food on-campus as overeating/overindulging. The googler I knew best who did this was vegetarian/vegan and very fit. She had access to lots of high quality food that matched her diet, and part of the reason she was vegetarian/vegan was because google's cafeterias made it easy for her.

Being vegan because the food is easily available? I’ve never heard that before.

I should clarify that my wife is vegan, and I‘m flexitarian/vegetarian. Eating at restaurants is often a pain because most dishes contain some kind of animal product. But I don’t see how ease of finding vegan food while eating out is a motivation to go vegan.

Really? Turn it around, perhaps it's more obvious that it being difficult would act against any desire to be vegan?

Against the desire, no. I was speaking to that. Compliance - sure!

For me personally a buffet style place causes me to paradoxically eat less, as I was brought up with a lot of food anxiety so not having to ever worry about “enough” food I end up eating a lot more sparingly.

I buy prepared food multiple times a day.

My wife and I together spend about 3k per month on food. We're outliers but it surely happens.

To a first approximation, no one is spending $60/day on restaurant meals unless they're traveling.

When Dropbox served food I valued it at 50k, ie: in order fro a company to poach me, given they don't have food, that's 50k they'd have to make up for. While I don't spend anywhere near 4k a month on food, there were a few things to consider:

a) 3 meals prepared for me saves me time and money. I love to cook but I don't have tons of time anymore and I don't have a a good kitchen. If I want to save time via delivery I end up spending tons more, and I don't think I eat as healthy.

b) The food was ridiculous. I've eaten a lot of good food, I've eaten in numerous countries, and Dropbox's food was god tier.

c) Tons of snacks, little treats, etc. Wine as well. Given the incredible quality of the food I wouldn't be surprised to find that I was eating quite a lot in terms of money.

It was such a quality of life win, especially as someone who loves food, to just have insanely good meals every single day. Even if ultimately it probably saved me closer to 1000 a month than 5000.

I guess I just can't comprehend a mindset where 3 meals a day at a company is this huge win. On the occasions when I went into an office with a non-free cafeteria, I didn't even always eat lunch.

ADDED: This subthread to me is such a bizarre look into a certain bubble of SV. [See also apparent disagreements with the statement that spending $60/day in restaurants is somehow abnormal.]

Indeed, as a Midwesterner, I'm fascinated by the sheer logistics of having to bring a sandwich to every computer programmer in San Francisco, every day. It's one of those features of "how cities work" that you never even think about.

Many of the comments here would get you literally laughed at interviewing at 99+% of the companies (including tech ones) in the US. "Give me $50K more if you don't offer three high quality free meals a day."

Then they also have to give you a free gym, to work those meals back off.

That's never been my experience.

Definitely not. Meals and snacks are becoming common perks in tech even outside of SF/the US, and people (especially young grads fresh out of college) are beginning to ask for them. I personally keep a look out for it, too, since I eat a lot healthier when compared to ordering food, and save a lot of time compared to cooking it.

I just can't imagine wanting to eat 3 meals a day at work, no matter how good they are.

You will be shocked that we even bring friends and family there occasionally! That's how good the food is :)

I remember the Japanese cafe at Google was very good at one point. This article has some pictures to give you an idea:

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-free-food-google-cafe...

You will be shocked, apparently, that there are people here saying they don't want that!

Sounds like when I was a conscript.

Exactly: I have to get out, and away.

Can't stand work canteens... something about the smell of food really puts you off eating.

It feels very forced.

Prefer an impersonal sandwich shop where I just have a wall to stare at than being in something attached to my workplace.

Its also not taxed which for a higher earner does multiply the benefit.

I am surprised that the IRS hasn't gone after this like HMRC has in the UK

They sort of have: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/benefits/pa...

But the companies are presumably eating the cost.

Most of the bigger companies have their own cafeterias and kitchens to produce everything in house. They usually contract it out to companies like Bon Appetit who completely manage the logistics and operations.

I feel like I justified my point well. Eating extremely well made food is a major win for me. There's the obvious financial and time savings, but there's also a lot to be said for having a fresh made meal three times a day - and Dropbox always had variety, they pretty much never repeated dishes (other than the standards - burgers, pizza, etc).

I ate some of the best meals I've ever had while working there. After a certain point that matters more to me than an extra N dollars a year.

It's just weird to be so ostentatiously luxurious with consumption, to allocate more to food than the median personal income.

Sorry, but it is what it is. I make a lot of money and there's a point where benefits like food matter more to me than 10s of thousands of dollars.

depends on if you're giving them 4 hours of work extra a day for them (12 hour workdays)

Imagine rarely eating with your kids or wife.

There are a lot of unmarried people too.

Sure, but imagine eating all your meals at work. Your existence would be work, eat 3 meals, commute, sleep at home.

For me getting home before dinner would be a massive plus to getting a free meal.

I did that for a while, but then I was also in midst of a crumbling relationship so it was a way to give each other space.

The dinner is also often relatively early, so you still have quite a lot of time after the commute (granted, if your commute is 1+ hour then it's far from a dream routine).

What I like is having the option, for example I had a late sports club that was close to work, so it was more interesting to grab a quick bite and stay there to go to the club and return home after.

Cut out the commute and sleeping at home with our latest perk, the sleep pod!

(/s)

I lived close enough to work that I could go home and then walk back.

Funny, I actually saw lots of people bring their family to work for dinner when I was at Google, it's pretty common actually.

That's both cool and a bit sad.

Imagine not having kids or a wife every year of your career.

Some people simply don't get much value or enjoyment from a good meal at all, in that case it's probably too hard to make them understand. But assuming that you do enjoy dining at a good restaurant once in a while, can you imagine that getting essentially unlimited meal vouchers at good quality restaurants (not cafetarias or fast food joints!) can be quite valuable for a good number of people?

Are all these people spending 10-11 hours a day at work or something? I usually eat breakfast (if I have it) around 8am and dinner some time between 6-7pm. I would never want to be at work that long no matter how good the food was.

What you are saying is that it became 50k cheaper to poach you when they let the leases go and gave away all the plants?

Yes, though I'd already left to start my own company, but we don't have a cafeteria either.

Does Dropbox no longer serve food?

I haven't worked there since before the pandemic, but that's my understanding.

They went full remote.

I can see the appeal of this if you're living alone or with some housemates who also live that lifestyle, but I can't see it working if you have a girlfriend or boyfriend unless they also work for a company that caters all their meals too. Otherwise you'd never get a chance to have breakfast or dinner together. That would suck.

I wonder, on some deeply dystopian level, if tech companies do this on purpose to keep their a large proportion of their employees single.

Dropbox allowed guests. I brought a number of people over my time there.

Would you bring in a spouse and kids every single day though?

I don't have those, so no.

I don’t think they are trying to keep the employees single, but they are definitely trying to get them to spend more time in the office.

8hr 9:30-6:30 (including lunch hr, between breakfast and dinner) day in the office isn't so unusual or dystopian.

I think a possible generalization is that each of us optimizes for what's important / possible in our lives and jobs. We never really knew how to impute the economic value of those things in the first place, but simply followed heuristics and cultural habits. And then the pandemic took all of our assumptions, and threw them out the window.

In my case, my family prepares almost all of our own food anyway. And more than a few days of eating prepared food begins to affect my health. But that doesn't mean a worker who lives on prepared food wouldn't value the benefit of free food at work.

Jesus Christ.

I eat well and spend maybe $400 a month on groceries and food.

I’ve heard that Google recruiters attempt to con potential employees into some ridiculous assessment of the “free” food as a compensation benefit with numbers like those that you posited above. I can’t imagine valuing daily meals that highly.

Likewise here, I'm floating around $300-350/month at the store, and that includes non-food consumables like tissues and cleaning supplies.

Thats pretty extreme. I am usually around $800 a month, but that includes about 2 meals a week at casual restaurants with friends.

(Context: replying to gray post)

Whenever a pissing contest about grocery prices happens (and don't kid yourself, if a number has been mentioned it's not a question of when but rather an indication that the pissing has begun) you must quote a lower number than the previous person. It doesn't need to be true, it doesn't need to include critical qualifying information like location and tradeoffs, it doesn't even need to be particularly likely -- but it must be lower. So it is written. Here, I'll demonstrate:

I only spend $250 per month on groceries and I cannot imagine the disgusting excess that could possibly lead anyone to waste a single cent more!

For how many people?

Just me. Granted I don't feel the need to save as much as I can in this department. I like quality meat that is not from a factory farm and vegetables. Probably $500 on groceries and $300 on going out to eat.

I'm glad others are shocked by that $60/day on food. I would say food takes up the largest percentage of my expenses and $60 is easily 5 days worth of food for two.

Lol I spend about 5-10$ a day on food. Where do these people eat at lol

Going to guess SF, where those are not overly expensive prices for eating out with a drink at each meal.

I like cooking and tend to prep on a Sunday, and then midweek on Wednesday if I'm bored. I live in Austin, TX. I don't usually eat out at all except the occasional outing with friends. Of course I'll splurge on the weekend depending on what's going on. That said I tend to eat the "zone diet" that stuck with me even after I lost a bunch of weight on it. It isn't particularly "hard" to find food to fit that scheme. Of course you have to not mind reheating food :) . I'm a fairly rugged individual and don't really need froufrou food every day https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/meal-prep-recipes-wee...

Can $5-10 a day get you food with this kind of quality and variety?

https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-free-food-google-cafe...

If you are eating that every day then you are destroying the beauty of food for yourself. That level of food should be a treat, not your "daily driver"

Pretty common for me, but I've mostly lived in places with a huge variety of fresh ingredients. That "level of food" is actually not that high in places like Barcelona, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, Sydney, SF, LA, Guangzhou, Bangkok, etc. 60USD/day (~1300USD per month) is not that much compared to how much FAANG employees are making. At the end of the day it's a matter of priority. Tons of people spend more than that on alcohol/cigarette/drugs/cars.

Per person, yes. You'll have to cook it yourself though.

You'll be able to make it healthier though, and tune it exactly to what you like.

I think so. I buy bulk (15-50lb bags) organic grains, legumes, flour, seeds. Makes it more work to calculate per meal but it's pretty cheap. I get a lot of verity but you do have to be creative and it helps if you are fast at cooking.

The biggest injustice in life is that when you are young, food is just fuel to get through the day. You can eat all of it and you don't care if it's good.

When you get older, you start to understand food, and you are willing to pay more for it, but now you have to count calories.

Can I survive on $10 a day? I did it on $3 a DAY when my parents were on food stamps, but I am not that crazy about going back to the "franks, rice, and ketchup" menu.

Same here. $60 is basically our two-people weekly shopping.

And those two people likely don't eat remotely as well as Facebook or Google employees.

Even if you value your labor/time to cook to be worth of zero dollars, when I was at Google my cafe had fresh seafood (a rotation of different types of fish, scallops, shrimps, mussel, crab, etc) and good quality regular meat dish (I particularly liked the skirt steak with guacamole), great vegan/vegetarian options, in-house made desserts including fresh made chocolate truffles every day prepared by the chef.

And that's just lunch, at one cafe, not including breakfast and dinner and options at the other 3 dozens cafes on campus.

If you can recreate all of that for two people with a $60/week budget, then kudos to you. I know I can't.

> those two people likely don't eat remotely as well

You then mention chocolate truffles. Personally if I had my employer providing ridiculous good food for free, I’ll likely live less healthy because I will eat those nice unhealthy things every day.

If I am prepping my own food I have complete control over what I buy and can choose _not_ to buy unhealthy things.

Also in my experience a reason why food prepared by a chef tastes so good: more fat used.

I assume that Google and Facebook canteens (well that’s what they are) are better than the ones offered by companies here in Germany, but I think I would still gain weight.

I used to work for Google for few years and I did gain some weight - just like many of my coworkers did. The food was delicious and looked great so I was eating too much overall and did not pay attention to the healthy meat vs vegetables balance.

For the last five years we're cooking most of our meals at home, maybe go out or order food once or twice a month. The food we cook isn't as exotic, nicely looking or sophisticated as the food served at Google, but it is tasty, fresh, healthy and the groceries are pretty cheap. And despite being older, my blood results are better now than when I was leaving Google.

You would be amazed at the quality of fresh food you can buy in the local stores. there's a good chance the potato you're eating for 5 dollar in the restaurant is the same one that's in your cellar which costed 5 cent

"And those two people likely don't eat remotely as well as Facebook or Google employees."

That probably depends on your cultural background.

Whenever I was in the US and worked for large tech companies I found the food too fat, too sweet, (interestingly same things like Kellogs are totally different in the US than in Europe), too much artifical flavor, too much cheese, too much toppings, large unhealthy portions.

The water and Cola tasted like Chlorine and were undrinkable - I guess you don't taste it when you grow up with that taste.

I had good food here an there, especially great - and expensive - steaks in NYC and once the best fish tacos in the world on a beach in San Diego, but overall the food wasn't to my liking. I was dissapointed by the food in SF, I had very high hopes from hearing all the good things but it was just average.

Food which I did like more than the food for "those two people" in general was the food in the South of France, in Sardinia, Corsica and Rome, desserts of the Middle East, in Japan and Vietnam - also Copenhagen is so underrated concerning food.

The food for "those two people" tastes natural, has no artifical flavorings and is healthy.

So it probably depends on your cultural background, as I've said.

Zurich has one of Google's largest offices in Europe. I doubt the food is as oily or over-sweetened as Silicon Valley. (And yes, broadly, I agree that US prepared food is mostly over the top on oil/salt/sugar.) It would be nice to hear from Googlers who have visited more than one office and its canteen.

My mistake, I assumed the thread was about the US in general, I hear what you say.

> Even if you value your labor/time to cook to be worth of zero dollars

I understand what you're saying, but still cringed at that statement. Eating well and, by extension, cooking is hardly something I would value at $0/hour and I find it mildly insulting that someone would devalue the time I dedicate to preparing meals.

If you don't like cooking and would rather dedicate some of your income to having someone else do it for you, please frame it in that way. It recognizes it is your own decision and comes off as less judgmental of others.

He did come off as a little harsh but he's not entirely wrong depending on how you value your time and priorities. for the record it is perfectly possible to eat healthy without having to spend(waste) time cooking. I steam vegetables, eat fruit, and eat a lot of lean chicken and sardines.

I can definitely relate to him because I hate spending time cooking, I don't like the prep, I don't like the drudge work, and I don't like to have to clean up afterwards. I have a finite lifespan and I don't wanna waste any of it on things that I fundamentally do not enjoy, particularly if it's entirely avoidable.

"As well" is subjective and your presuming those two people want to eat like that. I don't. I enjoy talapia, chicken breast, white rice, and Fiber One on a daily basis. I rotate in broccoli and peas, and enjoy the occasional Honey Bun, chocolate, and bowl of Cocoa Pebbles.

But the best part of the day is the very first fresh ground coffee with real sugar and real cream in the morning. You just can't beat it.

Curious where you live where you can get real cream legally? Are you milking your own goats or cows?

Most employees in Paris get lunch coupons at work.. I guess they may eat better than FAANG employees

Also fasting is better for you than eating all the time.

The $60 is laughably high, but the value of the perk of $400 a month might also be too low considering part of the appeal is presumably that it all gets looked after for you and you don’t have to prep food or even think about your meals (the value of having all your meals cooked for you isn’t the same as the value of the ingredients).

I read a bunch of comments in this branch, and I think yours nails it. Initially, I saw 60 USD per day and laughed. Thought to myself: "Ok, they will all be overweight in 1 yr -- like junior bankers!" Then, I realised the labour costs are pretty high, so 60 USD per day might be too low. It might be closer to 100 USD in "value" per day for Google to provide all your meals.

My total expenses for groceries and vegetables is less than $60 for a full month in India.

Why was this downvoted? It's useful anecdata. Thank you to share.

At wet markets in China/HK/TW/SE Asia, you might be able to eat for a month on 60 USD.

You don't factor the electricity/water for cooking & cleaning and the time spent doing it(calculate it by the hourly rate of a mid-range cook assuming you are there).

The key part there is "buying prepared food". 60 per day is much more reasonable if you eat out or get takeout/delivery every meal.

It sounds about right to me if you don't like cooking. Note that the cost is for prepared food.

Buying raw ingredients and cooking them yourself is cheaper in terms of explicit dollar costs, but if you don't enjoy cooking then you also need to assign some monetary value for having to do something that you don't like.

I think I would enjoy taking a break and cooking so free food is probably not worth $60 to me personally. It's not crazy to think that my employer gets a benefit of more than $60 through increased productivity by providing me with free food though.

Reading FAANG employees talk about food prices makes me realize the old "It's one banana. What could it cost, $10?" is something that was written based on reality.

When I worked at Google I so rarely paid for food that I began to completely ignore the cost of food when I did pay for it. It just didn’t seem to matter much.

At Apple Park lunch at Cafe Macs could easily run $10-15 (without a drink) depending on what station you ordered from. The food there was good but not exactly cheap.

The campus was really too big to leave for lunch unless you arrived at some stupid early hour to park underground below your office. It's a 10-15 minute walk to the south parking garage and then at least a 10 minute drive to the closest places to eat and none of those are cheaper than the cafe.

So unless you're bringing food from home you can pretty easily hit $20 for lunch per day. I doubt Cafe Macs is running a huge profit but the cost for employees is non-trivial.

And I thought spending up to eight euros for a warm meal (I'd have a sandwich in the evening) was stretching the budget.

Actually that is cheap.

I am used to pay at least 10 euros, for food + drink, unless I go to one of those special lunch time deals or street food places.

And since I am Portuguese, evenings is also a proper meal, so make it twice for the days I happen to dine outside as well.

Where do people not have a "proper meal" in the evening?

For us a sandwich isn't a proper evening meal, just something to eat on the go when no time for anything better.

In fact to this day I never gotten into the whole Abendbrot stuff, even though I have lived half of my life in German speaking countries.

Just explaining where I am coming from, not attacking anyone.

oh man I miss those 2 o'clock lunch deals (Menu del Dias) which would fill you up for like... 12 euros haha. I remember in Barcelona or Valencia you could go to a really fancy, highly rated restaurant and "splurge" for 20 euros. Miss that place!

Heck, I remember a salad at Harvard being $12.

But aren't there any lunch trucks, roach coaches, etc around for normal people to get food?

Nope. Parking requires badge access and there's no street parking near the campus. Even if some lunch truck set up shop in a nearby parking lot it would still be a 15-20 minute hike to reach it.

What’s your hourly wage and how much time do you spend preparing food?

And do you get overtime pay if you don't cook your own food?

I work for Google and live in Switzerland where food is really expensive so my situation doesn't generalize well.

However, if 1) I cook all my food, and 2) try to have a healthy diet I spend easily the equivalent of 30USD/day. Going to a restaurant sets you back around the same amount per meal.

So, assuming I work 200 days/year going to the office and get free food would save me 6k USD/year (also assuming I cook 100% off my meals). That kind of money would pay for holidays or other stuff.

Finally, my back of the envelope math didn't include the time I spend cooking and all the "premium" stuff I get at the office like fancy drinks and snacks, which I usually don't buy when WFH.

And you live in a country with a really nicely developed public transport infrastructure, so you don't go through the nightmarish car commutes that most USians probably have in mind. When I lived in CH, I did not mind the days I had to commute – it was mostly a relaxed trainride where I could get work done 75% of the time.

I really think a lot of this debate is colored by Americans thinking of the American commute.

Indeed. My commute was/is between 15 and 20 minutes door to door so I really don't mind the buffers between home/office!

Most of Europe has relatively nice public transport. I used to read books while on my way to work. That was 1.5-2 hours per day for my library. My previous office was 30 minutes walking distance from my home. Great way to wake up as opposed to coffee. While I was in the US, they had scarcely any sidewalks. Only in big cities it seemed appropriate to walk to somewhere.

On the other side, Europeans tend to think that there is only the US and Europe in the world. American-style long commutes are the reality in most of Asia, Latin America and the larger African cities. If anything, Europe is the exception.

My wife and I were spending maybe $1000/mo on takeout -and- we had free lunches at offices until the pandemic.

Once I committed to WFH life, it became a logical next step to double down on the freedom aspects and start my own consulting firm.

That meant I needed long term thinking. I learned to cook more often and turned my entire front yard into a garden.

Overall I would say WFH has been net healthier on my mind and wallet.

I am a huge proponent of Blue Apron (or a similar service). Have been a customer for 7 years now. It cuts down on grocery waste (do I NEED 1 liter of sherry vinegar to cook one thing?), and you pick up a ton of techniques that may not be chef-advanced but very useful in every-day cooking.

> do I NEED 1 liter of sherry vinegar to cook one thing?

It will last years though, do you NEED to cook only one thing with it?

That's just an example. Most of the ingredients that I buy without meal kits usually just go bad, there is no saving money justification there, especially in NYC where groceries are more expensive.

I think this is an 'occasionally cooking' problem.

If you cook frequently enough then it's just not an issue; there's always something with not much good life left, sure, but that's what you use next.

If course if you don't cook it's not a problem either, so it's probably unfortunately the cause of some reluctance. Maybe kits help that.

Wow. Thank you to share. How much garbage does this produce just from packaging? I cringe at packaging waste from takeaway. That is my number one reason to avoid it. (To be clear: I don't live in a place that uses remotely "eco-friendly" packaging like pressed recycled light cardboard and balsam[sp?] wood utensils!)

Consider a significant number of Googlers are upper middle class kids, possibly on the spectrum, who go straight from the ivy league to google’s cafeteria. These made up numbers seem reasonable and accurate to them because they never had to take care of themselves in the real word.

Don't ivy league students have to cook for themselves?

Many people at college generally do not have access to a kitchen.

If that's true at all it definitely needs an 'in the US' qualifier - it's surprising to me in the UK, and even more surprising we would be so different in that regard.

Is the cooked-for-you food free?

>Is the cooked-for-you food free? It's broadly true in the US as far as I know for on-campus university housing. (Off-campus housing and fraternities/sororities are often different.)

Anything but free. Meal plan requirements vary.

Where I lived undergrad, we had a kitchen for a suite of rooms although I ate out a fair bit. (Many dorms did not have cooking facilities though.) Both places I went for grad school (which were actually both Ivy League) had no cooking facilities of any type.

> Is the cooked-for-you food free?

It's not free, you are required to pay for a meal plan when you are on campus dormitory housing.

Wow. That's surprisingly different to the UK - I've never heard of anywhere having no kitchen available. (Other options are of course available, but certainly not required.)

In fact I'd guess it's probably a requirement here - I don't think student halls are treated any differently to any private rented accommodation, it's probably a requirement that there be access to a (possibly shared) kitchen.

It's also quite (and increasingly) common that you're only in halls (or at least only guaranteed a place) in first year, thereafter in private rented accommodation of course you'd expect a kitchen; whereas I gather in the US the vast majority are campus universities, and provide on-campus accomodation throughout all years.

At least in my experience, there is a kitchen area per floor with stove and oven, though nothing more than microwave and hot plate (and mini fridge) in the actual dorm rooms themselves.

They live all four years in halls most UK uni's have a lot of students in rented accommodation for al least some of the time.

Did the "The Young Ones" not get picked up in the US

lol I'm doing a bootstrapped startup. I ate: a can of tuna, peanut butter, greek yogurt, protein powder-based shake, and watermelon yesterday... maybe at a total cost of $3-5??

You only missed ramen in that list! (Are you "ramen profitable" yet?)

I save a huge amount on food wfh. Working somewhere without free food, I would buy prepared food every day.

From home, I whip something up from my kitchen every day

Right but a Google employee living in SF and commuting to Mountain View will spend 3 hrs/day commuting give or take. Are Google employees worth $20/hr?

This is the real question ppl commuting to work should ask themselves. Is 1-2h per day of commute worth the pay/benefits I get ?

When I get paid 200$ per hour, saving 20-30$ but losing 2h is totally not worth my time.

I would rather spend that time with family or my hobbies.

>If you weigh this against spending an extra hour or two commuting, then it looks like a lousy bargain.

How about if your commute is <20 minutes one way?

$60? Wow, happy to not be in the US.

I'd say I spend <$10 a day on food with good quality organic local ingredients.

That $60 is assuming that you're in an expensive area and are eating out three meals a day. You don't need to spend that much, even in NYC.

Not everyone spends that much. If have to guess that most people don't. I'm in the US, and spend less than half that much to feed a family and we don't eat cheap, boxed junk.

Thanks for the insight!

> If have to guess that most people don't

Most people definitely don't, at $1825 a month that's already more than the median cost of rent in the U.S.

Food and rent are separate markets.

And spending more in the food market than the rent market is definitely unusual.

Since you're home, you're free to make whatever food you want, anytime, for the 2 hours daily commute.

What!? Who spends $60 a DAY on food? I live in Zürich, a very expensive place to eat, and my weekly total food budget for my wife and me is like $170.

If someone eats all their meals out, that's not unreasonable. That's about what I'll spend daily when traveling in cities. Of course, that doesn't describe what I do day-to-day at home at all. I'll occasionally grab a pizza but that's about the only takeout/eat out I routinely do when I'm at home.

I live pretty luxuriously and spend about $100 per day on food altogether.

I've spent years, working in offices in London and not being thrifty with £, in fact spending too much on overpriced sandwiches, coffees cakes etc... but how on earth do you get to those numbers ??

It also depends on if you commute by car or public transport.

Some of us don't really object to 90 minutes a day of quiet time where we can read tbh.

It's not just the money, you also save time and effort which in my opinion really accumulates to something significant and distracting in the long run. It's just nice to be able to focus on your work and have someone else worry about food, and not having to take breaks for preparation/cleaning/doing dishes etc.

$15/day for coffee at home is way too high. You can buy a pound of high-end coffee beans for that price. A good grinder, aeropress and kettle will cost you less than $200. That’ll easy beat the quality of corporate cafe coffee. Even at five cups a day, you’re looking at $4/day.

> Commutes are responsible for a 10% drop in hourly wages

Maybe statistically, OK. But if you have a nice commute it may be likely the best part of your day. I have a mostly flat, 40 min bike ride in the woods every day, and it is my "me time" that I cherish and lets me unwind before and after work. Definitely not "lost time".

If you were given back those 40 mins, you could spend them on a 40 min bike ride in the woods.

If that's the absolute best way you can imagine spending those 40 mins, you don't lose the option to do that.

I also spend about 30 min per day cooking for the kids. Would you say that I could "get back" these 30 minutes by hiring a personal cook? Well, maybe, but I really don't live like that. It's a mildly pleasurable activity, even if I'm able to imagine "better ways to spend my time".

Reread that comment. He’s saying you would have the option of doing that 40m bike ride, which you don’t have today. For the majority of people that commute will not be a nice ride through the woods, and they can’t opt out.

I don't think a 40 minute bike ride is the kind of commute we're talking about. Most commuters are not doing so by biking through a nice woodland trail. I would love to ride to work, but it would take over twice as long as your commute in a climate that is inhospitably cold for biking for about 6 months of the year and often rains for the rest.

> it is my "me time" that I cherish

You have kids don't you? That seems to be a consistent feature of people I meet who espouse the virtues of going to work.

> You have kids don't you? That seems to be a consistent feature of people I meet who espouse the virtues of going to work.

Yes. But my liking of bike commuting is maybe more related to the fact that it is a positive change from using public transportation, where I felt really miserable (had to take two crowded buses with an indeterminate waiting time in-between).

But you are right that having kids changes one's view to work... often, after an intense weekend, I go back to the lab and say "finally! I can relax and get some work done".

That sounds wonderful. Why would you need a commute to do it? Couldn’t you just take a bike ride for the pleasure and let me skip the hour long sardine can frequently delayed train ride often in the snow, sleet, or rain in the process at the end of the day?

Could but probably won't. At least I found that even though I like the bike portion of my commute and had kept it up for the first few months it eventually dwindled away in favor of sleeping in and working longer. Something to be said for the motivation of being required to get somewhere.

Fewer than 1% of Americans commute by bike.[1] For the vast majority of people the end of WFH will not be a relaxing meander of me time through the forest.

[1] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/05/younger-worke...

You should post a video of it on YouTube (or somewhere else you prefer). A lot of people might enjoy it... a bit like Norweigan "slow TV".

I spend 150$+ per month on AC and heat because of the pandemic. I spent ~30$ in gas a month commuting. I could even walk if my bike didn't work.

Personally I like the free AC.

Once you optimize your job to be close to your home, many of the benefits of wfh disappear.

If you're paying rents/mortgages close to your work, those savings from AC probably disappear pretty quickly.

For people who like where they live that isn't necessarily a factor. Even if I was fully remote I don't think I'd move

I live in a medium/low col city. Not everywhere is NYC or Cali

> I spend 150$+ per month on AC and heat because of the pandemic. I spent ~30$ in gas a month commuting. I could even walk if my bike didn't work.

Work from home doesn't mean you have to literally work from home. There are plenty of places you can work from, ranging from free like libraries or parks, to paid like coffee shops and co-working spaces. You can get your employer to pay for the latter.

> Once you optimize your job to be close to your home, many of the benefits of wfh disappear.

Those optimizations become liabilities if you get a new job elsewhere.

I'm not a mobile person, I've traveled the world but lived in one city my whole life. I've done the 90 minute commute, I've driven all over. This role I picked especially because of the location. Work fits my life not the other way around.

$150 extra from 40 hours of AC is insanely high. That's about what I pay total in the middle of summer in Florida for a decent-size SFH. Check the insulation on your house for a leak. Also maybe consider upgrading to a ductless heat pump mini split. That would almost certainly cut your marginal cost to near $30/month.

It’s not uncommon to pay $3-400 for your electrify per month because of AC in the Midwest (for three months a year, that is)

My electric hits $400+ a month in the summer and it’s just going to get worse when our pool is completed. I live in a new 2500 square foot house in Arizona, our insulation is fine. And we have two pretty nice heat pump/ac units.

Fair enough. But in Arizona, it's not like you're just turn off the AC completely and let the house bake in the 115 noonday heat. Maybe you bump your thermostat from 76 to 90 from 9-3 (gotta give it time to cool back down before you get home). That cuts your power usage in half for six hours of the day, 22 days a month. At most that might save you $120 during the hot summer months.

A friend's pool in England is almost entirely sustained with solar panels: radiant ones to heat the water (as required), and PV to run the pumps.

It seems like a no-brainer to do this in Arizona, but I don't know the economics.

I’m likely going to get solar panels, but building a pool is an expensive frustrating process, and I didn’t want to take on an additional project at the same time. The pool also has an electric heat pump so as long as the solar panel install is large enough solar panels will cover both needs.

Still need to work out the numbers on the solar panels so I can decide if I should buy them, or lease them.

Have you considered adding solar panels to your house?

Yes, I’ve been in talks with a Tesla rep. Need to run the numbers on buying vs leasing, and get a few other quotes.

Where do you get 40h from? Assuming living in a place that has long hot humid summers and cold winters, thereby needing AC for most of the year, that number should be closer to 100~200.

I live quite frugally otherwise (balking at other numbers in this thread) and $150 per month in climate cost increase for the daytimes sounds perfectly normal to me. During the hot summers I spent twice that when living in an apartment in the big city.

Also consider most people rent and have little ability to impact insulation and efficiency in their homes.

Only if you're an extrovert. As an introvert I love people throwing stuff over the wall to me and I never have to deal with office gossip, politics, or other shenanigans.

My landlord noticed electric bill going up (combined with rent) and a lightbulb moment happened when we realized we've all been at home over the winter and its 220+ hours more of heat and other appliances every month.

> Once you optimize your job to be close to your home, many of the benefits of wfh disappear.

Alternative framing: your life has been constrained by your career expectation of working in an office; you've optimised around that and found a local maximum.

Work-from-home doesn't remove that local maximum from you, but it creates an opening to find a higher maximum.

I have a similar situation with heating. Two months of sub zero C this winter didn't help either.

Commutes also cost the one thing we can't get back; time.

Sometimes people say they're making a time trade off for more money, and plan to use that money to buy more time.

While money is fungible, time is not. You can't buy more time with your kids while they're young if they're already grown. You can't buy more time with someone who has passed away. And you can't buy your way out of missed opportunities in your personal life, once they've gone they're gone.

I would rather pay the maid to spend 5 hours to clean the whole house once a week, while I take the kids to the park or to the beach.

Same thing applies to cooking, groceries, errands, etc.

We talk about the time-value of money; perhaps there’s also a time-value of time.

Chap at work (at his home,rather!) has spent the last 15 months making and eating breakfast with his children every day.

He's not coming back to the office. No way, no how. He's seen a better life.

If you use public transport, you can regain that time. In the UK you can get a seat on most rush hour trains, and even standing up on the Tube you can read a book, listen to a podcast, do your email etc. It's also good thinking time.

Driving a car yep you're absolutely right, but if you commute via car a long distance for a considerable amount of time I think you're crazy.

No commute made me unsubscribe from almost all podcasts and read fewer books indeed.

Not to mention sleeping on the train.

Depends, public transport outside of London is often a complete joke in the UK. I switched to cycling after getting pissed off at a bus that came once every hour and a half, was often 30-40 minutes late and occasionally didn't bother to turn up at all.

Yep. My commute in London is basically the only time I get to read books.

Disagree strongly. I commuted solely via public transit for years, and it isn’t time you’ve regained in a meaningful way. Reading a book on a crowded train is superior to driving, and vastly inferior to reading a book in my hammock before working hours start. I also can’t work out, hang out with my family, or do all kinds of activities when I’m on public transit.

For the record, I’ve commuted via public transit (both bus and train), bike, and foot for long stretches of time. All beat driving, all are much worse than just not commuting at all.

> In the UK you can get a seat on most rush hour trains

I don't what commuter line you're coming in on but it must be one with seats on the roof.

Many UK Cities. I guess you're in London? Certainly wasn't easy to get a seat there, but then London is only a small part of the UK's pop.

Whenever the discussion of commuting comes up, the discussion revolves around worst case scenarios.

We are software engineers! There is no reason for us to put up with a worst case or even an average case commute. If we want to go into the office, it's easy for us to move house or move job.

Its not worth agonizing over a few bucks an hour, especially when going into the office has its own monetary benefits as OP mentioned. It would be a non-issue for most people here to just pay for an Uber back and forth to work, and not have to worry about driving at all.

Except of course if where we live is a compromise between minimizing distance to other places like our spouses place of work or our kids school.

Live close to work? No! Move further away so you can create more emissions travelling there and have a bigger house to heat/cool. Then complain when politicians don't put your needs over the quality of life of the people who actually live and pay tax on your route. Finally, sleep soundly at night knowing the brake dust you make them breathe comes from a Tesla.

> Whenever the discussion of commuting comes up, the discussion revolves around worst case scenarios.

The median and average commutes are not the worst case scenarios.

> Its not worth agonizing over a few bucks an hour

10% of a software engineer's yearly salary is nothing to balk at. A year or two of that is easily the down payment amount for a modest home, and is more than what many people make in a year.

> It would be a non-issue for most people here to just pay for an Uber back and forth to work, and not have to worry about driving at all.

I just checked Uber, and a one way trip to my last employer is $40 without surge pricing, and to another employer, it would be over $60. Assuming there's about 260 work days per year, that's at least $20k - $31k a year on Uber rides alone.

And it's not just about cost. It's also about time. Based on my last commute, I'd spend about two weeks straight just driving to work and back each year.

You don't have to commute. You chose to commute.

You maybe did it for a larger house. Or maybe for cheaper rent/mortgage.

We're not talking here about folks on minimum wage who can only afford to live 2 hours outside of the city they are working in.

The highly paid software engineers on hackernews could absolutely afford to live 5 minutes from the office, 30 minutes from the office, or 2 hours from the office.

They could afford to move to a city with good transit where they can only afford an apartment, or to a city with no transit where they can afford a giant mansion.

Please remember that not everybody here works for FAANG or similar companies.

None the less people do seem to make poor decisions when it comes to commuting.

This comment suggests you are from a generation where there was a choice

Mostly it comes from having made poor decisions in the past.

There is always a choice. Ten more miles equals one extra bedroom and so on.

Which generation doesn't have a choice? I'm a millenial and don't understand if this generalization is at me, genx, boomers or those damn new kids the zoomers. When I bought a house I was able to buy anything that was on sale and fit my budget except for retirement communities with a 55+ age restriction

You work at offie A, your spouse works at office B. There’s 20 miles between them. How do you avoid the commute?

Well, for one thing only _one_ of you needs to commute.

Secondly, you can work towards a situation where you don't have that commute, or it's cheap / clean / easy / you don't lose all the time. Spoiler: live on a trainline or buy a bicycle.

Third, I don't believe this is the main reason for commuting. I think it's because people want to live in one place and work in another, which is usually a bad idea - especially for the environment. It irks me when I choose to live reasonably close to work so I don't need to burn fossil fuels to get there, and then people driving their cars to and from some village complain about their commute whilst I have to suffer the air pollution from their vehicles.

I totally get that for some transitional periods a long commute may be required, but I don't know a single person who couldn't make their commute a 20min walk or by public transport if they moved or switched jobs.

> people want to live in one place and work in another, which is usually a bad idea

do you suggest moving every time you change jobs? I suppose that can be done as a single person or a couple, but moving homes every 4-6 years with children who have to change schools, etc is (I'm sorry) an insane proposition.

I suspect they don't have children, as finding a suitable and affordable family home in the city is also incredibly hard.

If you are single and can just up sticks from one apartment to another then yeah, it's pretty trivial.

> do you suggest moving every time you change jobs?

No, just if you move to a new job that's a long journey away from your house.

> Secondly, you can work towards a situation where you don't have that commute, or it's cheap / clean / easy / you don't lose all the time. Spoiler: live on a trainline or buy a bicycle.

Does "commuting" only mean "driving in a privately owned car" where you are based? I'd consider travelling by rail, bus or bicycle to also be commuting.

Depends, often commuting is seen as this long, arduous thing to get to work. When I was going to the office, it was a 15 minute bike ride along canals. Technically a commute, but it doesn't feel like it, and it doesn't take a significant amount of my day. Really, it's a nice small amount of being outside and getting a little exercise and was kinda relaxing, so a net positive.

I guess it's an American idea about commuting being a 4 hour journey sat alone in your 5-seat car on a 6-lane freeway.

The word commute literally comes from ticket prices being commuted for regular travellers (holder of a commutation ticket)

I.e public transport

Sorry I was unclear, yes I meant if you want to recover the time, take public transport.

> You don't have to commute. You chose to commute.

Are you suggesting people live at the office?

No: close by. As in : within 30 minutes of (electric) biking distance.

So... within commuting distance?

That's just bulls... People have a live besides work. Kids, family, spouses, hobbies, ... a lot of things have an influence where people can realistically live.

And furthermore, even if everyone was that free-roaming, only-working, highly-paid software developer you seem to consider average, still there wouldn't be enough living space really close to many offices for all employees.

I think their calculations are based on 24 hour days (1 hour roundtrip * 260 days). Vacations and work are based on 8 hour days, however, so in reality it's more like 30 days (6 weeks) of vacation time. And 30 minutes each way is much closer than most of the places I've worked.

> The average commuter in one of the largest metro areas in the country will spend over 13 full days commuting a year:

This might be technically correct. But realistically I'd count only working hours. 200 working days and roughly 2 hr commute for me a day. So it is about 400 hr commute to work/home i.e ~50 work days spent in commute.

That's one reason why I left Seattle. I was commuting 4 days/week, with a 1hr 15min commute in both directions, so I was spending 21.66 days a year in the car. Why so long? Affordable housing, of course.

I took a small pay cut, moved the east coast and now spend 24 minutes a day commuting, which is infinitely better.

> For those of us who have to commute, it's not exactly the norm to be saving money while commuting

This is true. I choose to live within walking distance of my office, and it has vastly improved my life - prior to this job, I commuted 2.5 hours a day, and that was awful.

These choices of course have complex tradeoffs, but you don't have to commute, it is a choice.

I feel like this borders on the kind of insensitive comment that people get when they live paycheck to paycheck. Why don't you just save your money for a month? Why don't you just buy nicer shoes so you don't have to replace them every other month?

I feel like the trade off isn't that complex. Walking to work is a luxury of having a well paying job in the city.

You're not wrong, but you are discussing this in community full of largely well paid professionals. The majority of is have the financial ability to live within walking/cycling distance of the office, even if we choose not to.

Are you not paying more to live near the office?

> These choices of course have complex tradeoffs, but you don't have to commute, it is a choice.

I have to live near disabled family members so I can help take care of them. It's either work at Walmart, commute or work remotely. I've done the latter for years, but before the pandemic, most non-remote-first employers' attitudes towards remote working was either simply "no", or there was the expectation that you were to spend a year or more working in the office before asking your employer to make a special case for you to work remotely.

I commute at least 2 hours each day I go to the office. If the MTA is running smoothly. I would estimate I spend closer to 20 days commuting each year. Plus $1,800, which pales in comparison to the TVM of hundreds of hours commuting.

I will not be happy to return to the office.

I thought I would like commuting as I’d find time to read more, but commuting during rush out to and from work is the absolute worse. I don’t even have space to open a book. And the metros in Paris are every 2 minutes so you couldn’t safely increase this rate. And obviously you couldn’t really make the metros longer (you could first fill a half and then a second half, but come on, let’s be realistic here).

If everyone remote worked half the week, I’d expect the metros to be half as full during rush hours. So it’s be a lot more enjoyable for everyone: space to sit and space to read a book.

I think the best of both worlds would be working at the office on average 2 to 3 days a week (on average; so I’d like to be able to work remotely for a week or two at a time).

This would also allow couples to alternate being home which would be nice for kids. If both parents work late at the office, who takes care of the kids, a nanny ? Expensive and doesn’t help the proximity between parents and their kids. My girlfriends mom stopped working when her kids started calling their nanny « mom ». That means that her career stopped. And that scares my girlfriend.

Finally, remote working would reduce traffic jams and hence help with our whole global warming situation.

So the 5 day at the office work week for everyone is: - not hygienic (metros more packed == greater chance of spreading the common cold, flu, stomachs etc == more money spend on healthcare == more sick leaves) - not green (why travel everyday when we do not have to) - not family friendly (who takes care of the kids when no one’s at home 60 hours a week?) - wastes everyone’s time (stand still doing nothing in the metro for an hour to work and back).

I’m all for the partial work at the office for the reasons mentioned by the grandparent comment, but go to hell companies that will bring the five days at the office back !!

You are assuming that salaries don't take that into account.

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