Not everyone on hackernews is paid SV salaries?

That plus flights from Australia are expensive enough in economy, business class is easily 4-10x that cost.

It’s incredibly expensive on international flights, right? A 12 hour flight sounds like something that would cost thousands for business class.

I remember being a high paid techie getting 19 hours of paid work done between Melbourne and New York, on a laptop in economy (and a long layover in LAX due to a storm). It was fricking glorious, most productive day of my life.

Not everyone on here is necessarily from SV?

When I fly transatlantic I don't mind paying to get an exit row or bulkhead seat, but even just premium economy is a much more significant increase in cost over economy, at least flying from Canada.

Business class flights from Sydney to San Francisco cost A$6k, 6-10x as much as economy. Flights from Sydney to Europe are more like 3-4x (A$7k vs A$2k) but still ludicrously expensive. Good luck convincing your company to expense that for work trips, and most of us don't have SV salaries. Honestly, I still manage to get some work done on long flights, the more annoying thing is flights which don't have power outlets or WiFi.

If you are a point hacker you could spend the points on upgrades (which tend to give you better rates than buying base tickets) but then you're paying for a minor comfort improvement that you wouldn't pay for normally -- which is a textbook example of induced consumption and is playing into exactly how airlines want you to use points.