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Comment by datavirtue | Hacker News Reader

Yes, and that should be paid as well. Standard average commute times factored into pay for hourly workers.

Absurd. If you don't like the commute distance then find a different job so your (pay / (time spent commuting + time spent working) is something you agree with. Or move closer to the job.

Or we could live in a sane world where you're paid for all the time you spend at the behest of your employer and let people live where they want.

"Just quit your job" / "Just move" is the absurd thing.

"Just pay your employee to drive 3 hours" is equally absurd. Or what if I decide to take a greyhound or amtrak even longer, please pay me to sleep! You also have the choice of not taking the job, or not moving away from your job so its hardly a fair comparison.

You're thinking about this like an engineer instead of a human and not applying any sort of reasonableness test. You can take as long as you want to get to work but you'll be paid for a reasonable commute time and distance just like how mileage reimbursement and per diem works.

You think in the world of business travel someone hasn't already thought about this?

But that's not how it would go.

The moment you make commute a cost for the employer they're going to start discriminating based on your commute. You don't live within 5 minutes of the job? Go find another job.

Or better yet - employer offered housing! You don't want to live on the workplace-campus? Sorry! We need somebody to buy from all the businesses we contracted for our workplace campus.

So then you don't actually get paid based on how long your commute is and the people stuck commuting 3 hours a day go uncompensated for the time because a 3 hour commute isn't reasonable -- which was the original point.

For simplicity we could just abstract that average commute and other factors(some days being busy or slow, some days having challenging/easy tasks, cost of living, etc.) and wrap that all up in a single compensation. Maybe call it a wage or salary, and then let workers choose the job with the best "wage" for their specific scenario.

But how are you supposed to set price controls on wages if some jobs are easy and right near where you live and others are hard and far away from affordable rents? Wouldn't the calculation have so many variables in it with such subjective valuation that only the person themselves could decide if it was worth it?

All that is in reality is employers subsidising people's decision to live somewhere with an outrageous commute (ie generally far away from urban centres). People who chose to live in urban centres close to where they're likely to work with shorter travel times are now being effectively penalised for making a responsible decision.

Alternatively we could force employers to pay for commutes but allow them to factor that into hiring decisions. If I have to pay you as if you worked 60 hours because you have a ridiculous 2 hour each way commute I'm just going to hire someone who lives 30 minutes away instead.

> penalised for making a responsible decision

You're applying a lot of judgement there. I too base all my life decisions on whether they're good for my employer.

> I'm just going to hire someone who lives 30 minutes away instead

That and the time you no longer waste from a long commute sounds pretty good for the urbanite so it evens out.

Where I choose to live, and therefore the length of my commute, is at the behest of me, not me employer.

Awesome. My commute time is now 5 hours each way. Please pay me.

Hyberbole aside, how would that even work? The further away from work someone lives, the more "commute time" they get paid? That has perverse incentives:

* I no longer take mass transit because driving myself is slower and I get paid more.

* I move further away, and take longer to get to work, and spend that time listening to audio books. My employer pays all that time, I'm doing a leisure activity, and I'm having a greater negative impact on the environment.

in the UK, commute in and out of work is not paid time. But any transport between places of work is paid time, so the argument is that "self-employed" gig workers miss out on paid transport time between gigs.

> I move further away, and take longer to get to work, and spend that time listening to audio books.

I like audiobooks and it would be nice to get paid to listen when I do. I would not trade even two hours of my day, every day I commute, by moving further away. You would have to be paid more than you value that time for it to make sense.

> You would have to be paid more than you value that time for it to make sense.

Why would you take any job where you don't get paid more than you value your time?

As someone that used to work for minimum wage...

Because I didn't qualify for anything better.

That's you wishing you got paid more, not you valuing your time at more than they pay. Needing the money is valuing the money more than you value the time.

These are marginal decisions. Eventually, the additional utility of more money drops below the additional cost of more time.

Sure, sure, but that's why you might take a commute which is two hours each way instead of one which is eight hours each way. That doesn't remove the perverse incentive, it just attenuates it. Eventually. And generally not before you're doing something quite inefficient.

Notice that you're also e.g. screwing around on the internet on the train instead of screwing around on the internet at home. People regularly already do that for four, five, six hours a day. Who wouldn't choose to get paid for it?

Might be reasonable as long as employers are allowed to fire employees for having long commute times.

Then everyone has to spend more of their income on housing because the supply constraint hasn't been lifted but if you don't outbid your coworkers on nearby housing you get fired.

I genuinely don't understand the downvotes. Y'all really be simping for your employers. Any time spent doing anything you wouldn't be doing if it weren't for your job should be paid and it's dumb that we pretend it shouldn't be.

This is how every salaried person's pay already works and it should apply to hourly workers too.

There is confusion between "commute time" before and after my shift and "driving time" required between deliveries or job sites.

It sounds good. I understand your fire behind the idea.

But in reality, in just doesn't work.

If I don't value my time, and my employer has to pay for my commute, then why wouldn't I choose to move an hour away from work, or take a job an hour away, to make more money without actually working?

How would you solve employers discriminating against people that live an hour away or paying a lower hourly wage to someone that lives farther away?

Usually in this kind of scheme you would not be paid your normal hourly wage but a low rate. If you still think that sitting in a car for a small return is better than just being at your desk or job site making full pay for actual work, that's on the employer for creating such a shitty job->pay match that it's better to endure traffic for peanuts than work.

Also, right now plenty of companies put out voluntary overtime that people don't end up taking, despite higher pay and literally the same work. Plenty of people would rather not be under someone else's command for an extra hour just to make a few bucks, and in fact, when you pay people adequately they largely don't want to do that. You always have weird outliers that think life is an idle game and try to make the bank account go as high as possible, but building systems around dumb outliers is not good systems engineering.

On average, people don't want to spend extra hours in their car, even if you pay them full wage. This is why when Uber started out they basically had to push subsidized high pay, so people would be willing to drive around all day.

Right now you can, with little experience, go make like $80k or more a year driving around all day, by being a trucker, and yet the industry is constantly struggling to keep people working, because the job is awful. If you have an employee that decides to move five hours away and waste ten hours of their day to make an extra hundred bucks, there are probably other things that make them a mediocre employee that you can fire them for.

No it's because that $80K is before a lot of expenses.

I downvoted for use of the word simp, I don’t think it has a place on hackernews.

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