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Comment by gowld | Hacker News Reader

Why was it OK to be required to work at an office 4 years ago?

It was never ok. I've been working remote for over 10 years, it's always been superior to being in the office. Post-pandemic the leverage went to the worker to demand better working conditions.

Whenever I'm sat in a four mile tailback at 6pm, I often look at everyone in the cars around me and, if they make eye contact, I give them a little nod and a smile, as though to say, "We chose this. This was a great choice".

Maybe you should live closer to work. The choice to live in sprawling cities and partaking in dystopian car culture _is a choice_.

I don't make enough money to afford a place within an hour of where I work.

Any advice? You seem to have answers.

Take advantage of the fact that you can change companies to somewhere that provides you with enough compensation to live near your work. This might require a move. People have moved for work for centuries.

I actually had to move to take my current job.

Any recommendations for places I can move to?

Sure, simple.

I'll just pack up my family of four and move to a bachelor apartment to save the commute.

I choose to have a family, and I choose to work too, I suppose.

Maybe $JOB will provide me a raise to do so.

Perfect argument for WFH. It doesn't get any closer to work than that.

Moving is a burden of a highly varying degree. The implication that it is a non-factor points to a fundamental absence of shared experience between you and the people you are criticizing.

I have moved significantly more than the average person to do exactly what I’m talking about here. Without money, with money, without kids, with kids. I feel like I have a pretty reasonable amount of experience.

It’s not that bad.

"Simply emigrate to another country, bud, you are choosing to live with the car culture"

You don’t have to emigrate to another country. I’ve lived in half a dozen U.S. cities with no car at this point.

And then what after he is laid off in 9 months by this job randomly?

Buy a new place next to the new employer?

Why buy? Buying houses is a bad idea if you don’t have certainty or value the flexibility of moving.

I work for a company that's fully distributed, and do ~2k miles a year, almost exclusively to visit family.

Your halfway-house "build your life around your career" mentality appealed to me in my early 20s when I was on starter salaries and was unmarried and childless. That is no longer the case and you couldn't - as I've had the pleasure of telling several interviewers - pay me to return to it.

> tailback

I assume this is the thing that's called a "traffic jam" where I live?

I'm actually British but I was appealing to the er, status quo in this case!

we always needed this. Covid was the catalyst for change, which I am eternally grateful for, but we cant let this change revert

It wasn't. Virtually everybody I know was miserable. Now they aren't.

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