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Comment by throw0101c | Hacker News Reader

> I hope employers will embrace remote work more once the baby boomer generation retires.

How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers?

> However, healthcare workers and others in similar professions often don’t have the ability to work remotely. In fact, Healthcare workers in New York have the worst commute times of any profession at 52 minutes on average.

* https://jeremybney.medium.com/long-commutes-show-structural-...

If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs.

Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session.

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> How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers?

One thing about these workers is there is a limit on density, and in many cases a strong correlation with the number of people who live nearby. There are only so many janitors you need, even for a large office building. Same with health care workers. The number you need is a function of the number of beds the hospital has, its size, and how busy it is - which has a large correlation with how many people live around it. Same with cooks. How many cooks you need in an area is limited by restaurants and kitchen space and how many people are around.

Not so with workers who could be remote. You can pack them in by the thousands and tens of thousands into cubicles in downtown skyscrapers. They in tern drive demand for cooks who have to come work downtown in an area they could not afford.

If you make the people that could be remote, remote you reduce this pressure. No longer are you packing tens of thousands of people in a very small, expensive part of town. This reduces the number of cooks you need in the very dense expensive part of town. This reduces the cooks who have to commute to a part of town they could never afford to live in.

In addition, with the reduced number of potentially remote workers who are paying extra to cut down their commute, you reduce the price pressure of housing.

Remote work reduces density, lowers price pressure, and increases the correlation of work to where people actually live.

So it benefits even the jobs that can’t be remote.

>Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session.

Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to.

This would be akin to getting a free infrastructure upgrade for those who truly need it.

> Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to.

Less traffic reduce stress, but you still have distance to deal.

And that assumes you can drive, and you're not too poor or have some other factor which restricts your ability to own/operate a car.

> But when one train recently stopped for a sick passenger, her commute expanded to a mind-boggling three hours and 15 minutes. She was late. To make up the lost time, she stayed longer with her patient instead of picking up her granddaughter from school. She had to enlist a neighbor to do that — for $35.

* https://archive.ph/1a6y3 / https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/health-care-work...

It would also reduce land costs in urban centers.

Edit: It would exert downward pressure on land costs. Obviously that can still be overcome by other factors.

> It would also reduce land costs in urban centers.

That does not necessarily follow: some folks may prefer to live in an urban area (only) because they work in said urban area, and so want shorter commutes, but I'm sure plenty live in urban areas because (e.g.) like the amenities.

As a sysadmin I can easily do remote work, but would still live in an urban centre.

As per Jane Jacobs: people do not live in cities, they live in neighbourhoods. I think most folks who live in urban centres do so because they like the lifestyle first, and a shorter commute may be just a nice bonus. There are also lots of folks who 'reverse commute': live in the city and work in the suburbs.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_commute

That may be true of people just out of school but my experience over a fairly large number of years was that relatively few people lived in the city and commuted out to a suburban office park. For one thing, even reverse commutes can be pretty slow in a city with a lot of traffic. I rarely drive into the city for evening events partly for that reason.

You definitely are not wrong, but remote work can also help the kind of individuals highlighted indirectly.

Perhaps a simple example is through remote work meaning fewer commuters, and so less traffic, less crowded trains, etc.

But also consider that schools and hospitals need to be near centers of population - if people are moving out of cities into smaller towns, then, over time, schools in those towns will need to grow, and those in the cities shrink, thus (one would hope) allowing teachers and hospital workers more affordable accomodation, close to their work too.

But, on the other hand, roles for janitors and restaurant workers may be reduced (if people are WFH and not needing office cleaning, and going out for lunch).

> If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs.

And thus wages should increase for "support workers", currently the lifestyles of those living in such high desireable areas are subsidised by those taking terrible commutes.

>How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers?

Janitors and restaurant workers are good examples, however hospital workers can be hybrid; remote classrooms have been a real thing since the 21st century.

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