> Employees waste 2 of their 16
I suspect that you don't commute to a large city (either via car or mass transit).
It's more like 4-6 hours.
Crazy.
I suspect that you don't commute to a large city (either via car or mass transit).
It's more like 4-6 hours.
Crazy.
2) I provided a number for peak rush hour, worst possible commute (bridge + construction), that I've actually done a couple times. FWIW I can drive to downtown in 25 minutes during rush hour, 10-12 minutes without, and that also would involve a bridge so a bottleneck.
3) An hour after rush hour is very different than 3am.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/...
They tend to ignore things like the laws of physics.
When you live 40 miles away from your destination, there's no way that you'll get there in 37.7 minutes, unless you can do over the state speed limit, the entire time. And that doesn't even count things like congestion, traffic lights, and whatnot.
Frankly, I'm kind of amazed at the nasty reception that my post got. I do apologize for my choice of words, questioning where the person lives, but folks seem to have some kind of stake, in commutes being unnaturally short.
People live in the suburbs, so they can do things like raise families, send their kids to good schools, and enjoy the kinds of leisure pursuits that are only available to wealthy people, close to the city.
There's a lot of people, living out here. I know of several people that live in Wading River, and commute daily, to Manhattan.
This is a scientific community. Feel free to get your maps out, and figure it out.
So, most people don't mind their commute. Also if I was hypothetically an employer, all other things being equal, wouldn't I rather hire people who don't have hobbies/things they are so committed to that they justify living "out there"? ;)
That depends.
HN seems to be a whole bunch of folks that are actually against the idea of living "out here" (not "there," to me). I find that interesting. I'm sure some demographic research would suggest why that is. I can tell you, from simply stepping out of my front door, that there are a lot of people, "out here," and I suspect that most of them work, somewhere.
> Also if I was hypothetically an employer, all other things being equal, wouldn't I rather hire people who don't have hobbies/things
Yeah, that's a pretty common mindset. "But why can't they all be slaves?" is what most corporate owners lament.
But if you want experienced, accomplished folks, you may find the pickings are a bit slim, in the immediate metro area. Might have to cast a wider net.
I lived in a city for a few years, and it was extremely convenient, but I was also unmarried, and ran a baseline stress level just below "squirrel on meth."
It seems that young people like being in the noise and bustle of a city, or close to it. Since tech has a real bad ageism problem, I guess that I shouldn't be surprised at the reactions.
But I am. I never thought of having a commute as something that defines an "old."
Boy, are some people in for a nasty surprise.
What hustle and bustle? Campuses of the likes of Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. are surrounded by layers of suburbs, populated (purely due to prices, both current and over time, considering who could purchase when) by "experiences, accomplished folks". They probably live the closest to office and have the shortest commutes.
I've lived on the East Coast for my entire adult life, and have experienced three metropolitan areas, and Not. One. Of. Them. had a 37-minute commute between an affordable suburb, and the center of the city.
Not. One.
I have managed to find jobs in the suburbs, which means they are probably not as high-paying as they could have been, in the city, but they worked out OK. Even then, I had ridiculous commutes (like 45 minutes to go 6 miles, in MD). My daily commute here, on Long Island, was 35 minutes to go 10 miles (for 27 years). That was from North Shore Long Island, to the center of the island. If I wanted to go to the city from here, it would have been at least 90 minutes, if I left at about 4AM (which many people around here do). 2-3 hours, in rush hour.
The thing about most companies on the East Coast, is they ain't real big on flexible hours. You need to travel during rush hour. The companies in the city can be a bit more flexible (I know of many people that work from 6AM-3PM), but the drive still sucks.
It's really weird to see people saying that this isn't happening, when it definitely is happening, and has been happening for decades, and I see it, every day. Miserable commutes have been a regular topic for discussion amongst my peers for as long as I can remember.
I have to assume there's some kind of cultural gulf. I definitely know that the tech industry is pretty sick with ageism, so that's a good bet. The people that live around me, are actually fairly well-off. The ones further East are likely to be lower on the food chain, and have much worse commutes.
DC was even worse.
Driving is 90 minutes, if you leave at 5AM. Train is 2 hours (including in-city time).
Many folks commute from even farther East.
Please don’t tell me that I’m “insane.” I would never have done that commute, myself, but have lived here for over 30 years, and have seen (with my own little eyes), people doing this every day.
I also don't doubt there are long commutes. However, I will assert that that is not the typical experience in New York, or elsewhere. No one in my at-work peer group has a commute that long, and no one in my outside-of-work friend group has a commute that long.
Without kids, there is no reason for the commute. But putting kids in an upscale suburban neighborhood with other kids of similar earning parents is the reason that I saw people put up with that commute.
I know a couple people who have done it -- living in deep Brooklyn far from the subway and teaching in the Bronx, or living deep in Staten Island and commuting to the Upper East Side -- but it is extremely uncommon.
The average NYC commute is 40 minutes. And only 10% of NYC workers have a commute longer than 60 minutes. [1]
Easily 2+ hours each way from door to door. And let me tell you, the LIRR is vastly overfilled during peak. You're lucky to get a seat for that 90 minute leg of your trip, and if you didn't, you were probably sardine packed in the aisle.
Average commute time in NYC MSA is 37.7 minutes, longest of any major MSA in the country. DC MSA is 35.6 minutes. Only ~23% of NYC have commutes longer than hour, and ~18% in DC.
(Note: statistics are using 2019 data, so doesn't account for anything COVID related, and people who don't commute are excluded from the statistics.)
Out here, in the affordable section, it's not as easy.
When I lived in the DC suburbs, 32 years ago, I lived in Gaithersburg, MD. I worked in Rockville (1 exit south, on I-270). Six miles, as the crow flies.
My daily commute was 45 minutes.
I-270 is a charming bit of tarmac. It's a 12-lane parking lot, that stretches from Frederick, to the Beltway.
I have no idea where those stats come from, but they sure as hell don't reflect the reality, around here.
Reality has a nasty way of not caring what the stats say.
I don’t think this is the average commute, but millions of people do this every day.
Their entire life, Mon to Fri, was wake up, go to work, maybe spend an hour with kids or watch TV, go to sleep, and repeat.
And they did not get paid enough to do it from age 30 to 55 or even 65. The only amount of pay that would be enough would be an amount that allows you to quit that nonsense life after a few years.
As a Vermonter kid, I had a lot of trouble getting my head around how he stayed sane.
The money was good - I'm pretty sure that was the motivation. Also part of his personality - he grew up in serious poverty and was driven to climb the ladder. And climb he did.
That said, the actual train ride was approx 75 minutes.
Even worse, I drove to Westchester for a number of years and that was 120 miles a day (60 one way) including a trip over the Tappan Zee! At least on the train ride I could read.
I no longer live in the NYC area and certainly don't miss those commutes.
One starts to lose his sanity somewhere between the potholes, broken roads, construction, crazy drivers, freezing rain and no parking..
Many people that I know make this kind of drive in the Atlanta area, and that's not due to them all being in particular industries either. 1-2 hours to get across the city and into the suburbs/exurbs is a fact of life, and millions do it.