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Comment by siliconc0w | Hacker News Reader

It's very sad to me that we didn't seize and expand on this alternative vision for work. A commuting culture is quite terrible for society and there are many examples of successful remote-first teams. Worse, we don't get even get the benefits of working together because these group-thinkers also buy into outsourcing and so we commute into an office only to spend most of our day on video call with remote teams. Idiocracy.

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I agree. Just goes to show how difficult it is to have lasting, fundamental societal change.

I will say that zoom fatigue is real and remote work can be problematic for people that are mainly in meetings. But we could have solved this with a better solution than snapping back to office culture.

Eh, I think the commuting negativity mostly stems from bad land use in America. Driving is wasteful, polluting, boring, dangerous, expensive, and just generally unpleasant. If we’d designed our society around walking/biking/transit people would be much happier.

During Covid there was some surveys done on whether or not people missed their commute. People who walked or biked were very likely to say they missed commuting. Those who took transit were split (mild dislike), and those who drove nearly universally did not miss it.

We built a pile of shit instead of functional urbanism in America and this is the result.

Which doesn't make any sense, because people who walked or biked could just have done the same when working remotely - just turn around after 1/2 of distance to the office and go back home. Then repeat after work.

They didn't miss the "commute to work", they missed the exercise and the internal soothing feeling, that they are doing something good for the health in spite of that trip being required to get the paycheck, and that it's not a total waste of time when done this way.

Remote doesn't necessarily have to mean work-from-home either, corporations could provide hubs or co-working spaces that are walkable or bikeable. So they can still get the warm managerial feeling of seeing badge-ins on a dashboard while also moving as away from 2h commutes and sterile office parks.

Tokio (rush hours aside) is enjoyable for commuting and having lunch outside. Despite all that people and building density.

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