Comment by dont__panic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dont__panic | Hacker News Reader

Most of my distaste for WFO comes from two places:

- the USA's failure to provide even a single city that's pleasant to live in and travel around without a car

- tech company insistence on open office layouts that are not conducive to deep work

The first one sounds like a commute problem... but it manifests in more ways than you think. When you have to travel around in a car, everything is expensive. Parking is a pain. There's a certain amount of effort required to hop in a car, leave the parking garage for work, find a parking space near a lunch spot, etc. It's a huge financial burden in maintenance and feeding with gasoline or electricity. The economics of cars also impact how much space cities can devote to housing, how dense we can make downtowns, etc -- which has knock-on effects on housing prices and rent.

Open offices make me never want to come into the office because I can't concentrate. They're always the wrong temperature. I can't personalize my desk or my space into something that best suits me. I can't leave stuff out on my desk, or even in unlocked drawers overnight because apparently the janitor might steal Kafka secrets and sell them to competitors.

I actually like the idea of walking or biking to an office (with an actual office for me) where I can collaborate with coworkers in person. But modern society and tech companies have externalized so many costs -- car ownership, commuting time, comfort, rent -- onto workers that I'd rather just work from home. The last city I lived in had massive car theft and crime problems at night; it's not like I'd "hang out" with my coworkers for dinner downtown even if we all showed up.

You've described Brooklyn and NYC at large... if you're anti-car then consider the city. Boston is a good second choice. I've lived in both.

NYC comes with the normal downsides of the biggest city in the US: expenses, limited space, crowding, and noise. But this is true of all large cities in the world: Paris, London, Tokyo, etc.

But it comes with the immense upsides of a functioning metropolitan transit system, which covers the majority of the living spaces, at an affordable price, and doesn't require Uber or car to go the "last mile".

Additionally there are countless flex offices, coworking spaces, etc. Everyone I've met in tech in the city has some sort of WFH/WFO at this point in the pandemic.

City life isn't for everyone but if you're looking for a good transit system in the US there are two or three (Chicago too)

Best of luck with your journey

What if I can't fit in a shoebox and can't afford anything larger? What if I have a dog and want them to have a yard that doesn't require me to leash them every time they want to go outside? I don't mind sharing a yard with neighbors, heck I would even share a kitchen space if I knew it would be maintained well and available when I need it. But none of that is even an option.

I don't buy the idea that only hyper-dense cities can be walkable. The fact that NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc. are the closest thing we have to anti-car living speaks directly to OP's point about the US not prioritizing building comfortable communities.

DC does a pretty good job of being a middle ground. Very walkable in most parts, a high number of single-family homes, lots of park space where you can take your dog off leash. Houses have gotten pretty expensive over the last 10 or so years though

You can't have walkable if each person has a lot of space.

Elevators are fast.

Not everyone can have a yard if you build up

Live in Queens or Jersey? Take the train in from outside the city? Not all of the city is Manhattan.

Except in NYC/Brooklyn, the crime rate and filth are both high. Not to mention the rude behavior that takes over anyone who spent more than a year there. Something like Tokyo, Singapore in terms of lawfulness and politeness is whats desperately needed in the US. Any city in the US is far from that.

As always, NYC is one of the safer US cities in the nation across basically any metric you can find, and sometimes one of the safest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

We leave our trash in the streets, and I'm an asshole. So I can concede those points! But most city dwellers in the US live somewhere less safe than NYC.

But most city dwellers in the US live somewhere less safe than NYC.

The link you provided says NYC is the 67th most dangerous by crime rate. That is for the city as a whole, not for any particular borough or neighborhood. It also doesn't take into account other non-crime related danger. It also lists over 20 million people living in cities with a lower crime rate, even though it doesn't include hundreds of other cities because it is a list of the top 100 cities by crime rate.

Haven’t 4 or 6 people literally died on the NYC subway in the last 6 weeks?

NYC needs more law & order

It has the highest police budget and the subway budget in the nation and still can't handle crime due to politics. Law, order and thousand other things have to improve there.

Per capita is useless metric when you spend most of the time in the most crime ridden areas (the busiest places in NYC). Crime/area is more relevant metric.

I have been beaten up bad by teenagers and cops did jack shit (across the river in jersey). A friend of mine got robbed at midnight on 5th avenue (it was busy), cops again did nothing. Gun shots in washington square park and a faculty member was robbed there. These are anecdotes from years ago, its much worse now. You've to be on guard every second when you're out (especially at night). This is not a healthy life, and no wonder people become rude, 0 trust society will do that. Traveling in subways are essentially playing Russian roulette with a few more empty chambers. You can't pay me enough to even visit that place again.

Awesome username :D

Boston/Cambridge and NYC come to mind as cities where one can avoid having a car. Are there others that save sufficient public transport, housing and support buildings that should be considered. In Canada, Montreal fits that description. I’ve not lived in or talked to enough people from Toronto or Vancouver to know how liveable they are on foot.

Open offices are a plague. Any company using them is interested in reduced real estate costs and having a younger staff. They’re not interested in productivity or quality of work.

Also open offices are the norm in many places -- so any company wanting a non-open office has to face going counter culture alone; apart from having to figure out logistics involved in setting up cubicles and offices. Some of us don't even know what non-open office looks like. Closest I have seen is the rooms of high ranking execs, doctors and professors lol.

Err, this sorta proves my point re: a younger staff...

Yep I was adding to your point. People who wfh are building nicer and nicer home offices also -- or at least fantasizing about it haha. And such an office is nearly impossible in a conventional work office building.

> - the USA's failure to provide even a single city that's pleasant to live in and travel around without a car

New York, for good reason, is considered one of the most desirable cities there is. I've spent lots of time in cities all over the world, when you have the means and the network, I found none of them held a candle to NYC.

I've tried living in NYC. Wasn't a fan. Too many cars, too much trash all over the place, too hard & expensive to get out of the city on the weekend.

Right now I live in a small New England town, which suits my hobbies and walkability desire pretty well. The biggest con, of course, is the difficulty finding other young folks with similar interests... but I found that tough in NYC, too.

What made NYC "one of the most desirable cities" to you? I suspect you're more interested in night life, museums, theatre, etc. than me. If you're not interested in that stuff (I mostly just want places to hike, bike, run, and good food/craft beer)... NYC's value:cost ratio really falls apart. But I understand that different people have different preferences.

Sidenote: if anyone reads this and knows of a moderate size town that's walkable, bikeable, close to nature (preferably by bike), has good food and beer, low crime, where I don't have to deal with huge volumes of cars on a daily basis... I'd love to hear about it! Right now Fort Collins, CO and Montpelier, VT are high on my list.

This is basically how my company works. We're sort of remote-first in that we have plenty of foreign employees around the world, but we also have a coworking space that people in that city are free to work from. Nobody is forced to work in the office and we have bookable rooms for meetings so nobody is disrupted. It's open plan/hot desks, so I tend to do my coding work from home, but I'm <10 mins from the building so I'll pop in for in person meetings (and the Rocket espresso machine in the kitchen). We also have flexible rules around working abroad eg if you want to visit family and work in another country for a week, that's OK. The tax situation is your problem, but eg I work abroad but I can remote work legally in the UK for 2 weeks a year without affecting my tax liability.

Would you mind sharing the company name? That sounds like a lovely model of employment. After getting used to my own espresso setup at home, I don't think I could work at an office without at least a decent machine (about as first-world a problem as it gets, I know).

Pleasant includes mostly crime free in my opinion, which makes it very hard for the US to attain. Probably ever.

Check out Boston/Brookline, I have a car to go see family / go north for nature but rarely use it!

Hush, the city is unaffordable enough already without a surge of VC valley types.

When I've visited Boston, I found it to be a pretty car-dependent city, both in Cambridge and in the city center. To the point where crossing the street at corners in Cambridge was uncomfortable because cars are parked way way too close to the corner, impeding visibility. Is Brookline significantly different? Personally I wish I could live in a community with no street parking and only essential car traffic, but keep my car in a garage within biking/walking distance for longer trips.

I love my midwest city. It doesn't have a lot of flashy tourist traps, but man the walks are great. I can get to local grocery, hardware and entertainment in a few minutes. Tons of great parks close by and really friendly people all around. Cost of living is so cheap that we can easily afford to travel whenever and wherever we want.

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