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Comment by nvarsj | Hacker News Reader

I was in the "office is a good thing" camp for a while, but having been forced now to do 3 days, then forced to move to an office an extra 20 minute commute away, I've changed my feelings on the matter. Spending 2-2.5 hrs in commute a day is a terrible experience when trying to balance a high pressure job with the rest of life.

I really miss hybrid with 1-2 days in the office. That was the best compromise all around.

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Commute really is key. When I used to have a 15-minute bike commute, I voluntarily went to the office five days a week. The 30 minutes spent each day is just good exercise.

Now I take the train that's 30 minutes long each way. I don't get the benefit of exercise, the time spent is doubled, and now I'm only going to the office three days a week.

At least you can be productive ish on the train, sitting in the car for a daily dose of near death experience is even worse.

Not sure which trains you're taking but any I've been on during peak times are standing room crush, no space for laptops or working

Most trains I've commuted on (in the Netherlands and Germany this is) weren't like that 9 out of 10 days. How well you can work differs per line, year, time of day, and type of train, but overall I'd agree more with GP than with your experience. Both exist, of course

Sure. That's a very biased way of looking at things. RBs/REs, and even S-/U-Bahn are likely to have ample seating even during "rush hours" in most of Germany. But it sounds like you've never seen cities like London during rush hour? Tubes are tightly packed with people. Even if you get a seat, it's unlikely you'll feel comfortable bringing out your laptop. I've got a friend who does indeed commute ~50min to Cambridge by train and gets some work done. But that's rather the exception for a city like London. Many people will have similarly long commutes just being stuck inside the tube with little space to maneuver.

I'm sure you can find more big-name examples like London but that some of the biggest cities out there are packed neither invalidates everyone else's experience nor should be a major surprise methinks. Probably more biased than looking at how the remaining 95% of the system runs? Of course, either extreme is biased

And anyway, saying you can be productive in a 30 minute train ride comes from the same mentality that says you can knock out some work "between meetings" when your calendar is a swiss cheese of meetings. It's not nothing, I guess, but it's sure not any kind of productive focus time, even in the best of scenarios.

It's really more complicated than this, because often commute has an inverse relationship with cost. The longer you commute, the more you save.

Sure, you could say going to office isn't too bad if you're 15 minutes away. But at 15 minutes away you're paying double for housing than if you were 90 minutes away. So even in the ideal scenario, RTO can be perceived as a huge pay cut.

I said I already don't enjoy a 30-minute commute. Even if housing is free I would not choose a 90-minute commute.

Right, I'm articulating one cost of RTO people often don't consider. For many, it could easily be the equivalent of a 20%+ salary deduction due to cost of living.

Hybrid means I still have to live in $1000/sqft territory, but also need a home office.

Why does it mean that?

I’d assume with hybrid you could always go in.

No, they're talking about the jump to 0 days where they can now live in a low-CoL area as far away from HQ as they'd like.

I did that when I was living alone. The empty office floor on a WFH day is kind of creepy, and now it’s weird to be away for lunch voluntarily.

How is any number 0-5 based on your preference not the best compromise in your opinion? Do you gain anything when someone who would choose not to be in the office ever is there?

All the people who want to socialize at work get the office, everyone who wants the flexibility of remote work get to enjoy that. From experience, making a remote-first team work in office is just working-remote but next to one another. Once you get used to all your processes being in-chat and having 5-10 async conversations going at once while working having to like stop and have only one stream of thought is like an adhd rug pull.

Commuting over an hour each way, if you're not exageratting, is so much an outlier that it makes these discussions difficult to talk about. Same way the real estate conversations on Reddit always devolve into "sounds good from my perspective in [New York|San Francisco].

I've personally always had at least an hour each way. What are commutes like where you are?

Average one-way commute time SF Bay Area: 30-45 minutes

For many, 60-90 minutes each way are not uncommon.

Your comment makes my point and then demonstrates it. I understand that hour+ commutes happen, but its the outlier or the tail of the bell graph, but in these discussions it's made to seem like every American is forced to commute an hour. SF demographics and infrastructure are also nuts, so I see it as another outlier in these discussions. I don't know how to make this point without sounding so dismissive, so I do apologize about this.

But yea, if we are talking about the impact of commuting on the individual, and the rhetorical example is a 90 minute commute in the bay area, I roll my eyes. A better example would be a HR generalist commuting 25 minutes from one Memphis suburb to a business park closer to town. Choosing a random example.

I usually read or sleep on the commute because I can take the train. It never really bothered me much because I like to sleep and read. Are all these negative comments about the commuting because you have to drive to work?

Or walk. Can't sleep or read when walking :( Podcasts are okay but doesn't fully engage me and so it's still just passing time and enduring the weather

Taking one bus and being forced to take a 30-minute break (usually reading for me) was fine, but now walking 25 minutes additionally to that same bus trip after the office moved to a new location is rather a pain. Tried taking an electric kick scooter but that slides all over the place and doesn't fit at the foot end of a bus seat so to cut down on walking I'd have to stand and babysit the device the whole ride (forfeiting the relax time); not exactly an improvement

Car is by far the quickest (about as fast as the waking time alone) but I'm not doing that on most days for climate reasons

I can sleep in my bed and I can read everywhere at home. Being forced to commute is not an advantage just because I can do both of those things in a worse way than at home.

Same. But that's ALL you can do. At its best, hybrid or full remote opens up a whole world of healthy, fun lifestyle options - which cost a company ... NADA (unless they're shitty companies)

Even if I had access to public transit, I'd be driving every day because I'm on immunosuppressants and public transit is a germ pool. Same reason I'm not a fan of working in person with parents of small children.

I used to sleep on the MAX(train) in Portland on my commute. I would never do that today. Too much crazy stuff happening in Weird Portland.

Besides, the sleep you get on a train/commute is not quality sleep.

Yes. For much of the US a train isn’t even an option.

Funny how that works huh? Only when it affects you, thats when you start paying attention.

Or, to put it with less hostility, Experience has value.

This was my first thought as well. A complete lack of self-awareness.

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