Just got approved for permanate remote last week. The thought of going back to a multi-hour commute and having my physical location dictated by a job just sounds absurd at this point. Never again.
Even if you have great transportation (Tokyo, London, New York), the commute is still pretty brutal.
The only real "solution" that was ever presented to this problem was to create smaller garden cities that would have their own industries...this never worked out because everyone had to be in the city (perhaps coincident with more service-based economies, manufacturing did move out of big cities).
It is an extremely hard problem (and to be blunt, the solution of most planners has been: make me emperor, I will allocate the resources...it is a huge political/social/everything problem) but remote working is a very legitimate solution...although the response of any company towards better conditions for workers is always suspicion (if the workers are happier, don't we lose...somehow?).
(An extremely nerdy comparison is with proto-industry in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution...a lot of the intermediate production in textiles was done in homes by, what we would call today, independent contractors...as the capital intensity of the textile industry increased and new technology was developed so...to put it bluntly...that you could employ children to do the work then you saw industry move into city centres and slums appear. But before this time, you had people working in their own homes and on their own machines, and it was far more decentralised...although these people were often localised geographically as there was a whole supply chain. Definitely indicates that things don't really need to be the way they are.)
I had this realization recently. Our entire society and work culture is structured around the laws of thermodynamics. In the industrial age, you had a mill or a forge, or a steam engine that was running 24/7 and necessitated high concentration of the workforce purely for reasons of thermodynamic efficiency of operating said equipment. Everyone had to "gather around the fire" so to speak because having disparate smaller works would be incredibly inefficient. In a world where information work now dominates, these constraints have become meaningless and are only perpetuated via institutional inertia.
Anyway, we are not that fledgling economy anymore. Contemporary high-rise apartments are really nice! Even the mass-produced 5+1s are perfectly comfortable and dignified homes.
Correct, the ones we have now that only rich people can buy and which exist during a shortage of housing. Assuming that this can just scale up to house millions of people makes no sense (and has never occurred anywhere, the reason why public transit systems are so important is because it has never been possible to economically build enough housing within cities).
One thing that I've found absolutely fascinating is looking at the Soviet sphere when it comes to residential housing. A lot of housing got destroyed in WWII, and the soviets realized that the best way to house a lot of people in a hurry was to build apartment blocks. These blocks were designed to have everything one needed, shops, schools, etc, within reasonable walking distance. The commute to work was handled with public transport.
Now, I'm not saying everything was perfect, but I do find it interesting as an approach to residential design, mandating a mix of essential services within walking distance of housing is unheard of here in the US, and really only exists in cities that existed pre-car.
Before the pandemic, I chose to live in the countryside but at walking distance from a train station.
Coworkers always seem surprised I’m living « that far ». But now I’m equally happy to work from home or to take my refreshing 25min train trip through the countryside.
I sometimes have to endure full train, but at least it’s never in the morning. And sometimes I have to exceptionally take my car, and im hating it, but it’s rare enough to have no impact on my well-being.
If I were to go into our city office, I'd only have about a 5 minute drive to the train station. But between leaving some slack to park and pay, the train ride, and either the subway or a longish walk on the other end, I'm still more than 90 minutes door to door--and that's with good transport links.
On the other hand I have my desk at home with the coffee machine in the kitchen. I do enjoy going to the office but being forced to do it wouldn't sit well with me.
TBH, they've been really fantastic about everything from the very beginning of covid. I think as more large companies get on board with this, we're reaching a tipping point where the B tier organizations are starting to realize they can use remote as a powerful bargaining chip to lure talent away from FAANG.
Most companies don't need the "intensive in-person collaboration", or whatever nonsense reasoning that FAANG is using to avoid full remote. They just need skilled efficient engineers to churn out CRUD work and move Jira tickets, which can be done from anywhere with minimal interaction.